How does RP affect your character build?

Maybe I'm the oddball, here, but I don't see what I do as "building" characters. I know the common thing to do is to maximize everything you can do, but I've never felt comfortable with that. I don't need to deal the most damage, fly the fastest, or have all the moneyz. It's always been important to me to have the choices of new abilities feel like an organic progression. And this means sometimes NOT taking some very useful abilities. And obviously, it means rarely being the most powerful on a team. I'm curious to hear other RPers' takes on this.

RP is RP and gameplay is gameplay.  I don't let RP choices influence my character decisions (powers, slotting, etc.) in any significant fashion.  Optimizing the efficacy of my gameplay experience is not relevant to maximizing the value of my RP experience. 

If you can't explain why a given character would have a certain power out of their appropriate power sets and archetype you're not bullshitting hard enough.

"Bullshitting" is kind of a coarse word for it, but still.

My main character hasn't taken any travel powers and hasn't taken several main powers simply because they don't fit the character.

As fact as character concept goes, quite a lot. Sometimes I come up with a character before I pick power sets. Sometimes after. But they are very much intertwined. Sometimes I skip certain powers if they don't look right. I have a fire melee brute that will not get fire breathing because it wasn't fitting, for instance. Pool powers, including travel powers, are only chosen if they fit the character.  Although often several can be made to work and I just pick what's better or my favorite.

If a certain character concept isn't enjoyable to play, it simply gets retired indefinitely and I come up with something else for a dozens of other characters. I am in no rush to be the best level 50 character or even being a level 50 character. Creativity is where it's at!

The only power I gloss over and RP-handwave is flight.  Even if I have to magically just assume that I have a special flight-belt.  Flight is just entirely too useful and necessary to me to ignore for RP reasons, no matter what origin or build I might have.

I try to represent what I can powerset-wise, but most of my RP characters really are concept builds not meant for performance. 

I've experimented around with a cop character as a club (police baton) scrapper just because dual-pistols seemed too much the "out of control" cop. 

I've planned a cop dual-pistol sentinel that focused on fighting pool attacks, switching to guns only when lethal force was warranted.

Tabby, my Forum RP character, is a kinetic melee (not claws) because the animations were too savage.  Instead, she's using what little spellcraft she can to energize the air for the blast (I have the rune aura on hands the same color as her attacks to make it appear something like spell weaving).  I made her willpower because her occasional clumsiness makes super-reflexes seem odd.

I'd probably do more if we had some more broad pool powers or alternate animations for pool powers.  Tabby would have the occasional last-resort claw attack.  My melee cops could have something more than a single pistol recipe.  My gun cops could have more melee variety- maybe a police baton...

To me, concept is king. If I can't come up with a concept to justify an AT or powerset, I won't bother.

For example, my main is Martial Arts. MA is mainly kicks, so I decided his hands are malformed and useless for fighting. He relies on his legs and feet, which ties in nicely with the powerset. To round him out, he's also Super Speed and Super Jump. I carry the concept forward such that I won't use Brawl or any hand-based prestige or pool power with him, despite suffering from a gap in rotation early on.

Funny thing, I had the same character back in the early live days, and there was a post on the old forums about changing some MA attacks to punches. One of the mods or devs indicated they were thinking about it, but then I piped up in the thread about how I built my concept around that quirk of the powerset. In the end they didn't change MA. I probably didn't, but I like to think I had some influence on that decision.

For me the concept of the character is what I build the backstory from, the powers from, and the route/way the character is going to level, and how he will RP.  All intertwined.

Have I skipped useful powers because of it?  Yes. 

About the only area I always try to optimize are enhancements.

This can be a tricky for me.

I've been in a few task/strike forces where RPer's haven't taken travel powers, and no other member had teleport other or the bring the team to the mission door power. These few travel powerless people all complained that the rest of the team did not wait for them to run, and in one extreme case walk to the mission door. And in the case of one lecture the other RP'ers on the team for not respecting their choice of character concepts.

I find this attitude to be inconsiderate of other players and their time.

That said. Mad props to the people that advertise and successfully run travel powerless task/strike forces!

I am what I like to call a "powergaming roleplayer" or a "roleplaying powergamer"

I build for concept. Every character I make has a concept, has an identity, has a reason to exist in the world with the powers they have.

From there, I make the build the most powerful I possibly can.

I may take power choices that are suboptimal. I take travel powers if they're needed for concept (in this day an age, outside of Stone tankers with Teleport, travel powers are purely optional and provide minimal actual benefit), I take stealth on brutes, I take more of the fighting pool than just 1 anchor power and tough/weave... and then? Then I minmax the ever living shit out of it. >.>

This can be a tricky for me.

 

I've been in a few task/strike forces where RPer's haven't taken travel powers, and no other member had teleport other or the bring the team to the mission door power. These few travel powerless people all complained that the rest of the team did not wait for them to run, and in one extreme case walk to the mission door. And in the case of one lecture the other RP'ers on the team for not respecting their choice of character concepts.

 

I find this attitude to be inconsiderate of other players and their time.

 

That said. Mad props to the people that advertise and successfully run travel powerless task/strike forces!

If I were on such a team and a RPer tried to lecture me about not waiting and "respecting their character concept" (especially after WALKING to the door) I'd be like "Your character concept is getting people killed, evil isn't going to wait for you to casually stroll across the city."

I may not take travel powers often, but I make damn good use of Ninja/Beast Run, Sprint, and the Jump Jet, and can beat most travel powers to doors. In character, sure maybe my character can't run 55mph and leap clear over short buildings... but they're a superhero, they have to have some means of traveling quickly. Call it a motorcycle, call it getting an Uber, call it an air drop.

RP substantially affects all of my character builds. In fact, all of my builds are RP builds.

The thought process goes: The Contextual Reality of the narrative setting of CoX has its own in-house rules. Like, for example, the setting rule that 'The Dead Cannot Change' (E.G. Ghost Widow). There are exceptions to that rule, but that is the rule of thumb/in general. Then there are more explicit rules, such as how individual powersets work. It's my personal opinion that the actual mechanics of how powers work in-game reflect how powers of that nature are intended to and treated as working in the lore of the game - because of course it would. And since I am willingly participating in/engaging in storytelling set in this particular universe, I look to how the powersets actually work to inform me as to how I should roleplay the use of particular powers or concepts.

While I will freely bend and stretch the functional aspects of an RP build to suit my purposes, generally speaking, I try to constrain what I can do IC with a character by what you might realistically and creatively expect a character to be capable of doing in-game. So if I have a Dark Miasma character with Black Hole, in RP I might also let them use it on themselves to phase shift, even though they don't have that actual power from the stealth pool. I might also branch out and let them use black hole as a means of transdimensional travel.

The most 'extreme' case scenario of this would be one character I have, who RP-wise, is supposedly a full-blown reality warper. In-game, they are a Gravity/Psionic Assault Permadom, and they have all of the presence pool powers. So they have a lot of really tuned up RP tricks which are supported by the powers they actually have in-game, but I try to make sure they are all creative and/or reasonable interpretations of how their actual in-game powers could be used.

A less extreme scenario of that would be one character I am leveling up, whose big RP 'ace in the hole' is, in fact, the Mastermind inherent power, Supremacy. Their backstory is that they are an underground prizefighter with latent psychic abilities that lets them draw power from and redistribute life essence through subconscious mental links with their adoring fans/people cheering them on. In-game, they are a Thugs/Traps mastermind who has every power from the Fighting Pool, and Knockout Blow plus Sharkskin from Leviathan Mastery. So your average Brawlermind basically, but how they actually play in-game and how I actually RP them is drastically different, because the context of fighting them or interacting with them in-game will always be vastly different than in written RP.

And the reason I do that is because the whole point of roleplaying in a given setting is to accept the premise of the setting. The premise has rules. If you don't follow the rules, you should have a good reason why you aren't. If you aren't and have no reason other than 'just because,' then you aren't really interested in roleplaying in the setting, you're just power tripping. Anybody can make a titan weapons/invulnerability tanker and then write them off as an Omnidimensional Evil Overlord with incomprehensible cosmic power, but that would be boring, trite, and also kind of dishonest to the setting. If you want to RP a particular character concept, you should make, at least, a good-faith effort to replicate a reasonable facsimile of it in-game.

And to reiterate, that's all just my opinion.

I'm not a power-gamer by any stretch of the imagination, but I do like to build my crew reasonably well... I just tend to do that within whatever their concept happens to be. Sometimes that means taking an epic I might otherwise not have (Kaikara for instance, a stalker who's supposed to be a very physical spin on a Death Mage, has the Dark epic rather than my standards go-to Body Mastery-) or it'll have me designing their set build to accomplish one very particular thing instead of another. (Grey Kestrel is my poster child for that. I made her into a ridiculous Recharge Monster. In order to perma-summon the patron pet Mu Adept who was roleplayed as her partner, Red Cardinal. Her ending up an absolute terror was a side effect of the roleplay considerations, but it was none the less true that she WAS.)

I may not always end up with the most bleeding-edge, "optimal" characters that way but I've gotten reasonably good at both keeping to a concept and making a character who can, at least, hold their own. 

One area I try to NOT let build limit me is the scope of powers.  Yes, it's good to be able to represent things in-game, but I do like having aspects of the powers that don't just fit the powerset box.

As an example, I have a stage magician critter mastermind. 

She has all the pets in the game, plus rabbits, mice, doves, and all the traditional stagecraft critters.  They're all trapped in a magical gem (she was too- until recently) and she can pull a bunch of them out and provide minor Telepathic guidance OR swap-forms with one of them.  Her mind in a mouse body, to slip in unnoticed or possess a bird to fly up to a penthouse balcony, etc.  possess one of them.  I represent that a little with teleport powers (popping away from X and appearing at Y) and the purchased panther travel power.

Maybe I'm the oddball, here, but I don't see what I do as "building" characters. I know the common thing to do is to maximize everything you can do, but I've never felt comfortable with that. I don't need to deal the most damage, fly the fastest, or have all the moneyz. It's always been important to me to have the choices of new abilities feel like an organic progression. And this means sometimes NOT taking some very useful abilities. And obviously, it means rarely being the most powerful on a team. I'm curious to hear other RPers' takes on this.

As a gamer i play all of it. I play the character build sometimes more or the RP sometimes more, and it is arbitrary from play to play as to which i may be doing.

When i have a good specific character play i want, then the mechanics of build are mostly ignored in favor of the RP POV dictating my build mechanics choices.

DocBot is a DocBot. No DocBot is equipped to do any harm, they only render support aid. SO DocBot has only 3 attack powers, ones i as a player was not allowed to mechanically forgo.

So i have the starting secondary blast power, the background attack power every one starts with, and brawl.

However none off those powers get any upgrades and none of them are slotted on my bars. only DocBot powers are ever used by the DocBot.

At other times I have a specific mechanical build in mind. A class/set of powers i want to run because i find them mechanically interesting.

in these cases i probably still give some RP to the character, but in this case the RP is derived from the character build, rather than i form a character in my mind that informed power choices based on their personality.

kind of like reverse  engineer the RP.

Common RP is: we imagine a personality and then that informs class/skill choices.

but you can actually start with the power/skill set and imagine the personality that made those choices.

So for me it depends on what's been of interest in my brain of late.

more mechanics interests is to build the toon and determine the RP from that.

more story telling interests is to imagine the character and build the toon from that.

But yeah when it comes down to it, if it is the RP that is the focus of the fun, then i can't see the "objectively irrational mechanics" choices being made, these are the rational choices from the character POV.

When i have a good specific character play i want, then the mechanics of build are mostly ignored in favor of the RP POV dictating my build mechanics choices.

DocBot is a DocBot. No DocBot is equipped to do any harm, they only render support aid. SO DocBot has only 3 attack powers, ones i as a player was not allowed to mechanically forgo.

So i have the starting secondary blast power, the background attack power every one starts with, and brawl.

 

However none off those powers get any upgrades and none of them are slotted on my bars. only DocBot powers are ever used by the DocBot.

Are you the same DocBot from this post?  You sound super fun to team and role play with.

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,2151.msg42935.html#msg42935

I agree with the rest of your post as well.

SO DocBot has only 3 attack powers, ones i as a player was not allowed to mechanically forgo.

So i have the starting secondary blast power, the background attack power every one starts with, and brawl.

The P2W vendor will revoke the origin based attack power, if you ask her to.

I do pay attention to what my characters are supposed to be able to do according to concept when building, and when those criteria are satisfied I shoot for survivability so I have a chance of not faceplanting when I type stuff during fights. Sometimes this means not doing what people would call optimal: my archery blaster has knockback procs in all her melee attacks except Ki Push doesn't need the help - she's a mutant with short-burst tactile telekinesis, which makes her shots super accurate and means that when she shoves somebody who's up in her face away, they get shoved AWAY. Indeed, Ki Push is the reason she's a mutant at all; I would have been perfectly happy to play a Natural origin, but since Ki Push isn't skippable, I felt compelled to explain how an inexperienced teenager could send a guy flying like Bruce Lee... and since her power works 100% subconsciously (i.e. the only control over it she has is where she's aiming or whether she lands a blow in melee), if one kind of hit will do it, ALL will. Somebody's probably going to complain at me at some point because ew knockback but I don't care.

And then there's my psi melee tank, whom I named Smack Talk, and with a name like that I feel OBLIGATED to put Perfect Zinger procs in every attack.

I consider them intertwined and build accordingly. however that doesnt mean a character cant be optimal, and infact the only way one can really justify RPing some kind of serious superman class bad ass is to be both well built in concept and performance.

For example I will not remotely acknowledge anyones claims in RP that they are resistant to psi abilities like mind reading if their power sets or IO set bonuses do not indicate at least some moderate level of resistance or defense.

On My pure human claw/wp  toon I dont take rise to the challenge. I only give him moderate amounts of resistance and push more into defense to  show he depends to some extent on agility and only has light armor. I use multiple sets procs in his attacks so he doesnt have alot of higher teir set bonuses, but his attacks while all not having more then 40 or 50% dmg bonus hit plenty hard and have all sorts of modest CC effects to help hinder enemies and compensate. On live this build never updated after fitness became inherent and was in fact much weaker then it is now, but even back then more often then not id have people impressed with my characters performance and compliment me evena s they asked why I didnt have inherent fitness.

build should reflect the character as they are RPd. We call those who act super awesome at low levels god moders while we recognize incarnates as the god like beings they are. Our Security level is an in game concept reflecting both our power rating and our success and effectiveness. We use pets, emotes, and power animations when we RP.

Our character is a sum of all its aspects when we RP. otherwise your just talking shiite in RP and not worthy of others time.

I consider them intertwined and build accordingly. however that doesnt mean a character cant be optimal, and infact the only way one can really justify RPing some kind of serious superman class bad ass is to be both well built in concept and performance.

 

For example I will not remotely acknowledge anyones claims in RP that they are resistant to psi abilities like mind reading if their power sets or IO set bonuses do not indicate at least some moderate level of resistance or defense.

 

On My pure human claw/wp  toon I dont take rise to the challenge. I only give him moderate amounts of resistance and push more into defense to  show he depends to some extent on agility and only has light armor. I use multiple sets procs in his attacks so he doesnt have alot of higher teir set bonuses, but his attacks while all not having more then 40 or 50% dmg bonus hit plenty hard and have all sorts of modest CC effects to help hinder enemies and compensate. On live this build never updated after fitness became inherent and was in fact much weaker then it is now, but even back then more often then not id have people impressed with my characters performance and compliment me evena s they asked why I didnt have inherent fitness.

 

build should reflect the character as they are RPd. We call those who act super awesome at low levels god moders while we recognize incarnates as the god like beings they are. Our Security level is an in game concept reflecting both our power rating and our success and effectiveness. We use pets, emotes, and power animations when we RP.

 

Our character is a sum of all its aspects when we RP. otherwise your just talking shiite in RP and not worthy of others time.

Sometimes a master craftsman forgets the arduous journey he took to get there in the first place, and scoffs at the work of a young man's first try at the craft.  He forgets that he too was once an apprentice with much to learn.  And had not another master craftsman taken the time to teach him he would not be where he is today.  He forgets that before he was an apprentice even, when he knew very little about the art, that his own initial attempts at crafting himself were pitiful and hardly worthy of praise.  He forgets that those initial attempts were the best he could do.  He forgets about the friendly journeyman passing through town, who took the time to talk to him about the craft, and inspired him to continue in the journey.  He forgets that journeyman spoke to him at his level, praising the effort that went into the work, and encouraged him to keep trying.  That journeyman who never spoke poorly about his attempt, even though they both knew it was not quality work.  He forgets that it was that encounter that spurred him to try again.  And again, until he knew that this was something he truly wanted to do with his life and finally apprenticed himself to a master who he could ask and learn from. 

That master craftsman now ponders...maybe I was too quick to scoff.  We both know it's a poor attempt, but perhaps if I just talk to him like that journeyman once talked to me, that this too might be another master craftsman in the rough, waiting for someone to notice the sparkle of the diamond he could be.  He struggles to remember how the journeyman approached him.  Not with criticism, but praise.  But how can I praise this poor attempt?  How can I even humor it?  He remembers now, the journeyman praised his effort, not the quality.  They talked about the passion of crafting.  He talked at his level at the time so that by humoring the young man that he was, he was inspired to continue the journey.

Bentley - I say this to you with absolute sincerity and zero attempt of sarcasm...you are a master craftsman at lore based RP and RP in general.  I would love to team with you because I would no doubt love the experience of teaming with someone so versed in the lore.  But I would be afraid to, because, alas, I am a mere apprentice.  I know it, you would know it, and I would rather not invite your scorn.  I role play because I have some passion around it, but even at the "set in my ways" age of 46, I could those fires being tamped out and the enthusiasm lost.

The post is a morality tale...it's my own creation, and it's clearly my opinion, and not based in any universal set of right/wrong.  But having mastered some crafts, having attempted others only to see my attempts squashed, and having journeyed along the path with others, these are my perceptions.

Revisiting the matter of Incarnates briefly: I agree that, as-portrayed in the setting, Incarnates should be treated as though they were exactly what that implies: More or less Living Demigods, leaps and bounds above most heroes and villains.

That said, not everybody who is an incarnate in-game has to be an incarnate RP-Wise. I have, for example, a number of characters who are members of the Malta Group - a Gunslinger, a Sapper, and a Commander. All three are also incarnates in-game, but RP-wise, that would never be apparent, and I wouldn't use their incarnate abilities for RP purposes.

The exception to that would be if another incarnate-leveled enemy appeared before them. *Then* they would use their 'limited access' to the Nanite Tech Malta got from teaming up with Battle Maiden in order to amp themselves up so they could combat an Incarnate level threat. And my other characters would behave similarly. Most of my 'incarnate-powered' characters are rarely actually literal Incarnates RP-wise, they're either just that exceptionally powerful on their own, or are temporarily pushing themselves to the ultimate limit, or using their own life force to fuel their battle prowess, etcetera. And similarly, if it simply doesn't make any sense contextually for one of my characters to be on the level of an Incarnate, even if they are an incarnate in-game, I just never use those abilities and modifications.

For example I will not remotely acknowledge anyones claims in RP that they are resistant to psi abilities like mind reading if their power sets or IO set bonuses do not indicate at least some moderate level of resistance or defense.

As far as I'm aware (which doesn't mean that I'm correct by any stretch of the imagination) there isn't any in-game attack or ability that lets the user read someone's mind, as far as I'm aware it's only something that can be done in roleplay not mechanically even if there are characters in the lore that are able to read minds.

I can see arguments for having a way to defend against mind reading even if you don't have defense against psionic abilities mechanically, so long as you aren't trying to argue that your character has a defense against abilities that they mechanically don't. I think you can be immune to mind reading if you have a good reason, but if you don't have a mechanical defense against dominate I wouldn't want to see someone claiming immunity to dominate in rp.

All of my characters are themed and even if I have to stretch a little I manage to justify their powers in their bios.  And I tend to take that powers that "fit" (including the travel power) rather than looking for the ultimate combo, although my characters still end up playing out well.

As far as I'm aware (which doesn't mean that I'm correct by any stretch of the imagination) there isn't any in-game attack or ability that lets the user read someone's mind, as far as I'm aware it's only something that can be done in roleplay not mechanically even if there are characters in the lore that are able to read minds.

 

I can see arguments for having a way to defend against mind reading even if you don't have defense against psionic abilities mechanically, so long as you aren't trying to argue that your character has a defense against abilities that they mechanically don't. I think you can be immune to mind reading if you have a good reason, but if you don't have a mechanical defense against dominate I wouldn't want to see someone claiming immunity to dominate in rp.

I have no stake in that conversation, just chiming in to mention that Mind Link allows for mind-reading amongst allies. Creative RP interpretation of a reverse use of the power would be reasonable, I think. Mind Probe does not say so explicitly but strongly infers such. Psionic Melee's very set description says all of its damaging powers grant insight into your enemies, which is pretty indicative.

The post is a morality tale...it's my own creation, and it's clearly my opinion, and not based in any universal set of right/wrong.  But having mastered some crafts, having attempted others only to see my attempts squashed, and having journeyed along the path with others, these are my perceptions.

You expressed my general opinion in a much more eloquent manner than I could have.